With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change

WITH SPEED AND VIOLENCE

WITH SPEED AND VIOLENCE

Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points
in Climate Change

FRED PEARCE

We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.

JAMES HANSEN, director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, December 2005

CONTENTS

Chronology of Climate Change
xi

The Cast
xv

Preface: The Chimney
xix

Introduction
xxiii

I WELCOME TO THE ANTHROPOCENE

i. THE PIONEERS The men who measured the planet's breath
........ 3

2. TURNING UP THE HEAT A skeptic's guide to climate change ....... io

3. THE YEAR How the wild weather of 1998 broke all records
..... 18

4. THE A N T H R O P O C E N E A new name fora new geological era
....... 21

5. THE WATCHTOWER Keeping climate vigil on an Arctic island.....
26

II. FAULT LINES IN THE ICE

6. NINETY DEGREES NORTH Why melting knows no bounds in the far North
............. 35

7. ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE Greenland is slumping into the ocean....
39

8. THE SHELF Down south, shattering ice uncorks the Antarctic
.... 46

9. THE MERCER LEGACY An Achilles heel at the bottom of the world
................. 49

io. RISING TIDES Saying "toodle-oo" to Tuvalu
................ 55

iii. RIDING THE CARBON CYCLE

i i. IN THE JUNGLE Would we notice if the Amazon went up in smoke?
............ 63

12. WILDFIRES OF BORNEO Climate in the mire from burning swamp
... 68

13. SINK TO SOURCE Why the carbon cycle is set fora U-turn
........ 71

14. THE DOOMS DAY DEVICE A lethal secret stirs in the permafrost......
77

15. THE ACID BATH What carbon dioxide does to the oceans
.......... 86

16. THE WINDS OF CHANGE Tsunamis, megafarts, and mountains of the deep .............. 9o

iv. REFLECTING ON WARMING

17. WHAT'S WATTS? Planet Earth's energy imbalance ............. ioi

18. CLOUDS FROM BOTH SIDES Uncovering flaws in the climate models
.................... 105

i 9. A BILLION FIRES How brown haze could turn off the monsoon
.... 115

20. HYDROXYL HOLIDAY The day the planet's cleaner didn't show up for work
.......... 120

V. ICE AGES AND SOLAR PULSES

21. GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE PLANETS Why Earth is "just right" for life
....................... 127

22. THE BIG FREEZE How a wobble in our orbit triggered the ice ages..
132

23. THE OCEAN CONVEYOR The real day after tomorrow............
141

24. AN ARCTIC FLOWER Clues to a climate switchback
............. 148

2 5. THE PULSE How the sun makes climate change
............... 155

VI. TROPICAL HEAT

26. THE FALL The end of Africa's golden age
.................. 167

27. SEESAW ACROSS THE OCEAN How the Sahara Desert greens the Amazon
................ 175

28. TROPICAL HIGH Why an ice man is rewriting climate history....
178

29. THE CURSE OF AKKAD The strange revival of environmental determinism
........... 185

3o. A CHUNK OF CORAL Probing the hidden life of El Nino
........ 188

31. FEEDING ASIA What happens if the monsoon falters?
.......... 194

VII. AT THE MILLENNIUM

32. THE HEAT WAVE The year Europe felt the heat ofglobal warming.
. 201

33• THE HOCKEY STICK Why now really is different
............. 204

34• HURRICANE SEASON Raising the storm cones after Katrina
..... 210

35. OZONE HOLES IN THE GREENHOUSE Why millions face radiation threat
...................... 217

VIII. INEVITABLE SURPRISES

36. THE DANCE The poles or the tropics? Who leads in the climatic dance?
..... 225

37. NEW HORIZONS Feedbacks from the stratosphere
.............. 229

Conclusion: Another Planet
237

Appendix: The Trillion-Ton Challenge
241

Glossary
253

Acknowledgments
259

Notes on the References
261

Index
273

CHRONOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE

5 billion years ago Birth of planet Earth

600 million years ago Last occurrence of "Snowball Earth," followed by warm era

400 million years ago Start of long-term cooling

65 million years ago Short-term climate conflagration after meteorite hit

55 million years ago Methane "megafart" from ocean depths causes another short-term conflagration

50 million years ago Cooling continues as greenhouse-gas levels in air start to diminish

25 million years ago First modern ice sheet starts to form on Antarctica

3 million years ago First ice-sheet formation in the Arctic ushers in era of regular ice ages

100,000 years ago Start of most recent ice age

16,000 years ago Most recent ice age begins stuttering retreat

14,500 years ago Sudden warming causes sea levels to rise 65 feet in 400 years

12,800 years ago Last great "cold snap" of the ice age, known as the Younger Dryas era, is triggered by emptying glacial lake in North America and continues for around 1,300 years before ending very abruptly

8,200 years ago Abrupt and mysterious return to ice-age conditions for several hundred years, followed by warm and stable Holocene era

8,000 years ago Storegga landslip in North Sea, probably triggered by methane clathrate releases that also bolster the warm era

5,500 years ago Sudden aridification of the Sahara

4,200 years ago Another bout of aridification, concentrated in the Middle East, causes widespread collapse of civilizations

1,200 to 900 years ago Medieval warm period in the Northern Hemisphere; megadroughts in North America

100 to 150 years ago Little ice age in the Northern Hemisphere, peaking in the 169os

1896 Svante Arrhenius calculates how rising carbon dioxide levels will raise global temperatures

1938 Guy Callendar provides first evidence of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but findings ignored

1958 Charles Keeling begins continuous monitoring program that reveals rapidly rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

1910s Beginning of strong global warming that has persisted ever since, almost certainly attributable to fast-rising carbon dioxide emissions, accompanied by shift in state of key climate oscillations such as El Nino and the Arctic Oscillation, and increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet

Early 1980s Shocking discovery of Antarctic ozone hole brings new fears of human influence on global atmosphere

1988 Global warming becomes a front-page issue after Jim Hansen's presentations in Washington, D.C., during U.S. heat wave

1992 Governments of the world attending Earth Summit promise to prevent "dangerous climate change" but fail to act decisively

1998 Warmest year on record, and probably for thousands of years, accompanied by strong El Nino and exceptionally "wild weather," especially in the tropics; major carbon releases from burning peat swamps in Borneo

2001 Government of Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, signs deal for New Zealand to take refugees as its islands disappear beneath rising sea levels

2003 European heat wave-later described as the first extremeweather event attributable to man-made global warming-kills more than 30,000; a third of the world is reported as being at risk of drought: twice as much as in the 1970s

2005 Evidence of potential "positive feedbacks" accumulates with exceptional hurricane season in the Atlantic, reports of melting Siberian permafrost, possible slowing of ocean conveyor, escalating loss of Arctic sea ice, and faster glacial flow on Greenland

THE CAST

Richard Alley, Penn State University, Pennsylvania. A glaciologist and leading analyst of Greenland ice cores, Alley is one of the most articulate interpreters of climate science. He has revealed that huge global climate changes have occurred over less than a decade in the past.

Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist. In the 189os, he was the first to calculate the likely climatic impact of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and thus invented the notion of "global warming." Modern supercomputers have barely improved on his original calculation.

Gerard Bond, formerly of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, New York. A geologist, Bond was one of the first analysts of deep-sea cores; until his death, in 2005, he was an advocate of the case that regular pulses in solar activity drive cycles of climate change on Earth, such as the little ice age and the medieval warm period.